A Veteran Maître d' Dishes on Valentine’s Day Pasts

Christos Kalabogias of La Dolce Vita spent 15 years at Sunset Tower, four at San Vicente Bungalows, and has never missed a Valentine’s Day working the floor.

Christos Kalabogias keeps the books at La Dolce Vita in Beverly Hills, where a reservation is a hot commodity. Once a Rat Pack haunt, the intimate, clubby Italian restaurant boasts a modern cheetah print carpet and maroon leather booths that date back to 1966. After it closed during the pandemic, current owners Marc Rose and Med Abrous (Genghis Cohen, The Spare Room) revamped the interior and the menu, retained its exclusive Hollywood feel, and reopened last March. A key part of LDV’s successful revival is having Kalabogias at the door, a Greek immigrant by way of Chicago and a veteran Los Angeles maître d' with a resume that spans 15 years at The Tower Bar and four at the San Vicente Bungalows. 

Last week, as Kalabogias was gearing up for the restaurant’s first Valentine’s Day in its current incarnation, he shared his most memorable love stories from two decades of serving Los Angeles’ rich and famous. He sat in Frank Sinatra’s former seat and dished on over-the-top requests, Jennifer Aniston, high-production proposals, Tom Ford, and more. Right this way…

The Angel: How did you get your start working as a maître d' in L.A.?

Christos Kalabogias: I worked under [the legendary maître d'] Dimitri Dimitrov for a very long time. He's a perfectionist, the places that he has worked, you can literally eat off the floor. He plays such a chess game with how he seats and takes care of a room. If you’re upset, he knows it before you even walk in the door and finds a way to make sure that you have a great time. 

That’s not 100% of what I do here now, but I really do do that. There have been a couple of instances where someone has said to me, ‘For as young as you look, you really do your homework.’ He is one of the greatest teachers ever. He takes time, and he is such a student of the entire industry out here in L.A. 

I started with Dimitri in my early 20s at Tower Bar in the very, very beginning when our only real client was Jennifer Aniston. [Editor’s note: Tower Bar opened in 2005.] She is such a sweet, kind person. She would come in almost every night, bring whoever she’d bring in, we’d take care of her, and then next thing you know the bar started to fill up, and it became kind of a show. From that moment, you could tell what Dimitri was doing—he was building and building and building and building the room. He built a brand.

Then I followed him to San Vicente Bungalows for four years and trained all of their staff before opening La Dolce Vita last March.

My family is from Icaria, Greece, which is a very small island in the Mediterranean. We did hospitality our whole life. My father taught me this very general way of taking care of people. Then, Dimitri found a way to refine it. I love taking care of people. I love making people’s nights. I love looking you in the eye when you're very upset and finding a way to make your night so memorable that whatever you were upset about is out the door. 

There’s a story from a long time ago. I don’t want to tell you who exactly it was, but she was the biggest A-list actress in the 90s. She walked into the restaurant, beautiful woman, and the very first thing she did was take her jacket and put it on my head. Any other person in the world would have been irate. The first thing that came to my mind was, ‘I'm gonna make this woman love me.’ I took the jacket, I put it over my forearm, and I was like, ‘Fantastic, I will check your jacket for you, I’m also going to take care of you this evening.’ I had researched this woman because Dimitri always wanted you to do research, and I knew what she liked to drink and what her spirit was. I came back with a vodka martini, olives, no vermouth, ice cold.

That’s how my mom drinks her martini: no vermouth, extra cold.

CK: That drink is straight to the point, there’s no BS about it. She looked at me and asked who told me. I didn’t answer, I just said, ‘We’re so happy to have you here. Please enjoy the evening.’

So you grew up in Icaria, Greece?

CK: I spent three years growing up there with my twin brother and my family. Then we came to the States, where my father owned a restaurant in Chicago. In my early teens, we moved back to Greece briefly, where my family had a tavern in Icaria. My twin brother and I were the ones who would go to your table and sing you a song. From there, we went back to Chicago, and my father opened up two more restaurants: a very nice diner and a fast food joint. He opened three different restaurants that were very profitable, and we were always involved in some way. I left Chicago and moved to L.A. at 21 years old, but when you’re a young person with a resume that says you’ve done things that seem above your age, people don’t take you seriously. They’re like, ‘You did payroll at 21 years old? I don’t believe you.’ So long story short, I went to apply to McDonald’s, and on my way there I ran into a kid that I knew who ended up introducing me to Dimitri at Tower Bar, and that was the very first love story of my life in L.A.

As someone who has worked in restaurants for so long, what’s the significance of Valentine’s Day? Is it the busiest night of the year?

CK: It's the most intimate night. It's not necessarily the busiest. But it's not a normal night, by any means. Anyone who visits any place on Valentine's Day has a goal, an agenda to impress, to show someone, ‘I love you. You are the apple of my eye.’ It's a very fun night to work. When you're in hospitality, people are allowing you a glimpse into their life. And when you see two people who really love and care about each other and allow you to be a part of it in some way, it’s a learning experience. Life is finite, we're not going to be here forever, and the best thing you can do from anybody is learn and appreciate the moments where people show you genuine love. Valentine's Day, as Hallmark and as cheesy as it may be, there's a very genuine side to it where if you stand still enough, you can pick up on. 

Do you get nervous before Valentine’s Day service?

CK: Yeah, 100%, because people have very high expectations, and you want to deliver. The space adds a level of stress, too, because everyone wants to be in the dining room [at La Dolce Vita]. But the lounge is going to have a lot of A-listers because it’s just as desirable. It’s our VIP area. This is where Frank Sinatra’s buttcheeks were. He never sat anywhere else. It’s going to be a bit of a nerve-wracking night because I want to fulfill [all of our guests’s] Valentine’s Day fantasies. Everyone here does: the chef does, the wine director does, the bartender does, the room does, the owner does. We want to give you that feeling of, ‘We love you. We love that you chose us. This is what we like to do in this town, and we’d love for you to love us back.’

What are some of the craziest requests you’ve gotten on Valentine’s Day?

CK: I had someone ask me for a little person to deliver them a bottle of Dom Pérignon. I knew someone, and they did it. We made sure that it was at the very final stages of the night, so they were the last people in there. I've had somebody ask me to tell the woman joining them for Valentine’s Day upon arrival that the man was nowhere to be found, that he stood her up, and that she should come to have a drink at the bar. And then he is in the corner, hiding, waiting for her. There's no light on the table, he wanted it to be gone. He wanted her to lay eyes on him by accident. 

What about over-the-top, luxurious requests?

CK: I had someone who wanted to bring a swing with a cage around it, and they wanted to be swinging on the swing, facing the scenery. This was not at any of the restaurants. It was an event. They’d be swinging, then you would walk in and see them swinging, and they would just look at you, and you say, ‘Oh, my God, what are you doing?’ And they’d reply, ‘Will you let me out of my cage?’ All I'll tell you is that that was at one of Gene Wilder's properties. It wasn't Gene or any of his family, it was a rented-out situation. I’ve never seen that big of a bird cage in my life. 

Kalabogias at the host stand, where photographs of La Dolce Vita’s former owners hang.

Can you tell if a couple is going to have a good time on Valentine’s Day, from the moment they walk in the door?

CK: Yes, because the less effective you are to those people, the better they will be on their own. When someone is looking for you to define their Valentine's Day, that’s when you realize that it's not about them. It's about you. They're waiting for you to make it special for them. And 90% of the time when that’s the case, somebody will leave early, or go to the bathroom 100 times, or be on their phone.

This is your first Valentine’s Day with La Dolce Vita. How do you feel about it?

CK: It’s memories. As cheesy as it sounds, I tell everyone I love that memories are the most important thing in the world. So for me to be able to have Valentine’s Day here and have people expressing love to each other and being in good spirits, it’s what we all got into this for. You get into this hoping that every day is Valentine’s Day. If I could have Valentine’s Day legitimately every single day, I would.

Have you ever helped orchestrate a proposal?

CK: There were two really fun engagement moments at Sunset Tower. 

One took place before we opened when no one else was around. I had to set the entire dining room. I ran to Bristol Farms and bought a bunch of roses, I plucked rose petals and started throwing them all over the place. Table 25 is where all our very famous VIPs sit. The late Brad Grey, who was one of the kindest people I've ever met in my life, loved this specific table. Tower Bar is Bugsy Siegel’s old apartment, and the building itself has so much memory. John Wayne had a cow at the Sunset Tower in the ‘20s or ‘30s, he kept this cow under this specific table, and the cow would provide milk for everyone in the building. Also, table 25 has the backdrop of the window, the fireplace is there, and the piano is there. We brought someone to lightly play ‘All Night Long’ by Lionel Richie, very lightly. His girlfriend was under the impression that she was meeting someone for a job interview, so she thought she was going to meet with some business guy, not her fiancée. She’s an actress, so we were given this whole spiel about the producer she was supposed to meet. I brought her through the curtains, and you see this very attractive guy, one knee, rock out, looking at her, and he’s literally crying. The girl is so confused, she’s looking at me, she’s looking at him, she’s looking at the waitress, and I’m like, ‘Just listen to the moment,’ and I left. That table never got resold, it was for them for the rest of the night. They went on and got married, they have a kid now, they live in Seattle. L.A. does something — if you time it right, it’s like magic.

There was another instance, which was one of the funniest moments I’ve ever had proposing-wise, on Valentine’s Day. A gentleman and his partner, a super sweet couple, very chic people, came in two weeks before their engagement. The one who was taking the initiative came and found me and said, ‘Hey, I'm going to be back here in a few weeks, and I’m going to propose. This is my contact number, I’m going to reach out to you, I want these specific things.’ Long story short: this guy is a billionaire and he buys out the entire right side of the restaurant, which is gorgeous, it oversees Sweetzer Ave and all of L.A. His partner doesn’t drink and is a very nosy person, so he’s never looking at you, he’s always looking around at everyone else. So in order to keep his partner’s attention, he hired a bunch of actors to perform a scene at a specific time that would allow him to pull the ring out, get into the appropriate position, and propose. I didn’t know exactly what was going to happen, but he planned for one of the actors to fall into the pool, which would take everyone’s attention to the pool. You hear a scream, people start running through the restaurant, more actors jump into the pool, and they fall into a synchronized swim that congratulates what is about to happen. The fiancée is on his knee, with a ring out, you hear a splash splash splash, his partner looks at the pool, he’s like, ‘Oh my god, can you believe—’ and when he turns back, we’re waiting there with a glass of Champagne and a glass of apple cider. It was so L.A.

So dramatic.

CK: So dramatic! From that moment on for the rest of the night, it was a very beautiful, intimate celebration. I’m married now, but I remember thinking to myself, ‘Holy crap. Nothing I do will ever live up to any of this stuff.’ But what you realize in that moment, what you see between people, is beyond the show—what really captivates both people is that millisecond, that special moment, where it’s an honest question between two people: ‘Will you marry me?’

How did you propose to your wife?

CK: My wife is from Chicago. It was Christmas time, and Millennium Park has a 30-foot-tall tree that has no ornaments. So I had my twin brother go down there and put an ornament that I made on the tree, which isn’t allowed. I was leaving to go back to L.A. the next day, so I told my wife (then girlfriend), ‘I need you to wake up early, we're gonna go ice skating and have hot chocolate in downtown Chicago.’ She was like, ‘Should I get my nails done?’ She had an idea. So I pick her up, and I take her downtown, we have hot chocolate, we go ice skating, and then it’s time to leave, and she’s super pissed. She hugs me, and it literally felt like a police officer was searching me—she poked me everywhere. The ring was in my back pocket, and so when her hands started coming down, I hugged her close and threw the ring to my brother who was nearby. She looks me dead in the face and she’s like, ‘I’m so disappointed.’ I’m playing dumb, like, ‘Why? What’s wrong?’ We start leaving Millennium Park, we get close to the tree, my twin brother gives me the thumbs up, and I’m freaking out. My legs are numb. It’s this feeling that feels so definitive, where you start to question yourself, like, ‘If she says no, you’re going to look like an idiot in front of all these people.’ She’s walking, she’s pissed, she doesn’t even want to hold my hand, and I look at her and I’m like, ‘This is such a cool tree, there are no ornaments on it. Oh there’s one ornament, why don’t you take a look at what it says?’ I lift her, and she gets onto this ledge, all of a sudden people around us start to realize something weird is happening. My brother and his wife were filming, and he throws the ring back at me. She grabs the ornament, which I bedazzled, and it says: ‘If you wish to live happily ever after, turn around.’ Literally, in two seconds, she looks at me, and I’m down on one knee. She’s wearing gloves because it’s wintertime in Chicago and she looks like a crazy person trying to get her gloves off her hands. Then she throws her hand in my face. I’m holding the ring and I’m looking at her, we lock eyes, and there was nothing to say. I just held her and said, ‘Well?’ 

I’m not a romantic person, although we all want to say that we are. If I love you, you know it. But there’s something about this town and how dramatic we are, I can say I’m very dramatic now. I never would’ve done what I did if I hadn’t learned from the people ahead of me and what they did. My mom was like, ‘I never pegged you for this type of person.’

L.A. has really gotten to your head.

CK: (Laughs.) It was honestly amazing. I’m very honored to be apart of this stuff for people. I keep in touch with the two couples I helped get engaged. They come [to La Dolce Vita] now. 

What will be happening here on Wednesday night?

CK: We are going to be doing a curated prefix menu of LDV hits for two that will be a lot more than people bargained for. I think we’re going to need a lot of to-go boxes for it. There’s going to be tuna tartare, a choice of pasta (bucatini or spaghetti and meatballs), the gigantic veal, which I’ve never seen two people finish in my life. I guess people will try, which will be a fun task, but I doubt anyone will because Valentine’s Day is a balance of romantic and sexy. From the cheetah doorknob to the carpet to the beautiful luscious booths, I don’t think anyone is going to try to overeat. I think it’ll be a huge wine and cocktail night. And I think a lot of the food will be leftovers for snacks later.

The cheetah print carpet at LDV.

What do you think is the most romantic food?

CK: C’mon, spaghetti. That’s why we’re serving two versions of it, you have the bucatini and the spaghetti and meatballs. It’s going to be so cute. If someone does the Lady and the Tramp move… we should probably get a photographer for the night.

What makes a restaurant romantic?

CK: Lighting. I’ve worked with a lot of lighting geniuses, it’s not something I sought out, but something Tom Ford taught me a long time ago is that [lighting is the most important thing]. At Tower Bar and at San Vicente Bungalows, we changed everything for him. A spotlight sat right on him and shadowed his forehead. He found an exact light bulb that was more subtle. We put that in, and the light barely touched his forehead. Look, these booths are original. This carpet is sexy. That doorknob is sexy. You look all over this place, you see beautiful cats everywhere. This place screams intimate. If we had the lighting any brighter than it was now, it’d be just another Beverly Hills place. The lighting is the most important thing.

The booths date back to 1966.

Also, since there are no windows in here, you feel like you’re in a private world.

CK: That’s why the paparazzi hate us. We get so many paparazzi at the door trying to pretend as if they’re looking through a menu.

What advice do you have to guests who want to make Valentine’s Day special?

CK: Make it about the company, more than anything. It’s more about you than about the place, and when people have the right idea about each other, it will bring the place out even more. 

Since you work on Valentine’s Day, when do you celebrate?

CK: The day after. 

Setting a table for service.